A Little Pink Ribbon
by Vietta
Summary: Elena and Reno meet as children and traumatize each other.


"Elena! Hands in your pockets, now!"

Elena blinked and put her small, even for a six year old little girl, hands into the pockets on her dress. "Momma, I just wanted to see it!"

"Don't touch anything, Elena! I mean it!" Elena's mother pointed a stern finger at her, her voice laced with threats of a spanking if obedience was not given to her.

Elena nodded, "Yes, momma. I'm sorry."

Elena's mother, Charise, lowered her finger and nodded in approval. "Good girl." Charise turned and pushed her cart around the store, her small child following closely at her heels. She tried to ignore the stares she was getting, the eye patch she had received after the surgery she had had a few days ago was drawing a lot of unwanted attention. She felt Elena's small hand tug on her jacket gently as she looked at lunch meat and she looked down. "What, Elena?"

"Can we go to the park today, momma?" Elena's round, honey brown eyes begging silently. Charise wished that Gunner, Elena's older sister, hadn't taught the young girl to give her puppy dog eyes. She wasn't able to resist those cute little eyes.

"We'll see." Charise smiled and patted Elena's hair and, noting that the little pink ribbon in her hair was coming undone, tightened her ponytail.

Elena wrinkled her nose as Charise toyed with her hair. "Momma! You're mussin' up my hair!"

Charise chuckled and kissed Elena's forehead. "No, I'm not. Don't whine." She turned and resumed her shopping, trying to ignore Elena as the little girl tried to loosen her ponytail again.

Elena helped Charise carry the bags of groceries back to their home, tiny face turning red with effort. "I wish Gunner was here. She could carry soma the food!"

Charise smiled and carried the heavier things easily, years of practice making her hardier than her young daughter. "Elena, you know Gunner isn't at camp to make things hard for you. She went to have fun." Gunner had been given an opportunity to go to a free week of summer camp. Elena was too young to go, but Charise wouldn't tell her oldest daughter no when the trip was free. She missed her terribly and worried for her, but she knew she was in good hands. The people who ran her school were the ones taking her and a select group of other children out of the city for a week for fresh air and good fun. She would be fine.

Elena grunted cutely and carted her bags up the stairs, tiny arms straining. "I wish I got to go have fun!"

Charise followed Elena up the stairs, rolling her eyes. "You wouldn't have gotten the ice cream I just bought for you if you had gone, now would you?"

"Ice cream? I didn't see ice cream!" Elena stopped at the top of the stairs and started searching the bags she had.

"Hey, hey! Wait until we're inside, Elena! You're making a mess!" Charise frowned and unlocked the door to the small apartment she shared with her daughters. There was no husband for her anymore. One daughter had been too much for him and a second one had finished the no good bastard off. He had left her with one barely weaned baby on her hip and another in the oven. She didn't know where he was now and she didn't care. She had her girls and that was all she needed.

"I'm sorry, momma." Elena picked the groceries back up and set them in the bags, sheepishly dragging her bags inside. "Thank you for buying ice cream."

Charise nodded and began putting away groceries. "You're welcome, darling."

Charise and Elena quickly put away the groceries, Elena's little eyes brightening with glee as she put the ice cream into the freezer. "Yay! Chocolate chip!"

Charise smiled. "None until after dinner and only if you eat your beans."

Elena wrinkled her nose. "Eww, I hate beans!"

"Then no ice cream for you!" Charise teased, putting away the last of the groceries.

"Wah! I'm sorry! I'll eat my icky beans!" Elena quickly ran to the cupboard and grabbed out the large can of lima beans as if her life depended on it.

Charise laughed and took the can from Elena's tiny fingers, sliding it back into the cupboard. "Not until dinner time you won't. I thought you wanted to go to the park anyways?"

Elena beamed, her childish mind easily pulled to a different train of thought. "Yes! I wanna play outside and the park, momma!"

"Well, get your shoes back on and we'll go, sweetie." Charise poked Elena's nose and watched her run off, taking a few moments to adjust her eye patch while Elena tried to tie her shoes.

By the time Charise had managed to unknot and properly tie Elena's shoes, there wasn't much time left in the day to go to the park. It was six o'clock already and the streetlamps turned off at eight. They walked to the park quickly, Elena practically dragging her half-blind mother behind her. By the time they got there Elena was bright-eyed and ready to play with anyone or anything that happened to be in the park. She quickly ditched her mother on a bench, kissing her cheek on command and rushing towards the sandbox.

Elena sat in the sandbox, the skirt of her dress pooling out around her legs as she grabbed a shovel and started digging. She pretended she was digging for treasure, filling up a nearby bucket with glee. Soon she abandoned her efforts to find treasure, the discovery of an old bandage put an end to that game, and she started building a castle instead. As she piled up her sand, a boy stomped into the sandbox and stood next to her. "Hey, kid! This is my sandbox! I was playing here!"

Elena blinked and looked up, wrinkling her nose at the grubby faced boy. He had bright red hair, but there was so much dirt crusted into it that it was matting in places so it wasn't pretty like her Auntie's red hair. His pale face was streaked with dirt and he had bruises all over his cheeks. There were scabs all over his elbows and knees and Elena cleverly deducted that he must be a bad kid who got into a lot of fights. His attitude towards her made her think that he picked most of the fights he got into. She tried to be nice; it was simply her nature. "Can't we both play here? I'm making a castle. You wanna help?" She offered him a shovel.

The boy blinked and took the shovel, used to people simply leaving the sandbox. "Okay?" He sat by the pretty girl, examining her pretty honey brown eyes curiously. He didn't know why he didn't just push her out of the sandbox he had claimed, but he was pretty sure her brightly shinning eyes and nice smile had been what convinced him to be nice to her.

Elena smiled brightly at him and patted the sand down. "I'm Elena. What's your name?"

"I ain't got one yet. Papa doesn't wanna give me one." He toyed with the sand, letting it drip onto the castle messily. "You can just call me kid. That's what everyone else calls me."

Elena raised an eyebrow and patted her side of the castle. "Why don't he wanna give you a name?"

The boy shrugged. "I dunno. It doesn't matter though. I don't need one yet."

"Oh, okay, kid." Elena smiled and started decorating her castle with rocks and a few leaves, making sure she left the bandage alone.

"What are you doing?" The boy cocked his head to the side curiously, his violent nature tamed by sudden curiosity.

"Decoratin'. You can put whatever you wanna on your side of the castle." Elena smiled brightly, turning a stick into a flag by tying the ribbon in her hair to it. She knew her mother would be upset that she let her hair down, but she was too busy having fun to care much. So long as she ate her beans tonight she'd get ice cream even though she mussed up her hair.

The boy beamed and left the sandbox. "I'll be right back!" He ran over to a nearby tree and plucked something Elena couldn't see off the side, running back to the sandbox and setting his prize on the top of the castle. He wanted to show the pretty girl one of the best things in his world.

Elena shrieked at the large spider the boy had plopped down onto her lovely castle, acting on impulse and squashing it with her shovel. "Ah! Spider!"

The boy gaped in shock as she lifted her shovel, his pet spider mashed to pieces in the sand. He felt tears rim his eyes and he frowned at her. "Hey! That was Spikey! He was my pet!"

Elena frowned and wrinkled her nose. "Spiders aren't pets! Puppies and kitties are pets! Spiders are gross bugs!"

"You're a gross bug!" The boy pushed Elena over, his rage at having his pet killed bringing his violent nature back to the surface. He kneeled on her without realizing what he was doing and started punching her, wanting to squash her like she had squashed his bug. He left bruises on her chin and eye and pushed her face into the sand vehemently. He didn't feel bad for bashing her pretty little face until it was purple. She cried loudly and screamed for her mother, who quickly rushed over. The boy jumped up and quickly stuffed sand down her dress before rushing off; he didn't need her mother giving him a spanking. His own parents punished him enough as it was.

Charise picked Elena up out of the sand, holding her to her breast as the scoundrel who had beat her up ran off. She stroked Elena's hair and stood, carrying her home so she could put ice on the large bruise blossoming across her cheek. "It's okay, baby, I've got you. Momma has you. He's gone."

Elena cried all the way home, her feelings hurting just as bad as her face did. Why had he beaten her up? All she did was squish a bug! It wasn't like there weren't fifteen million bajillion bugs outside anyways! She let her mother nurse her and wash the sand out of her hair without any complaints, glad that her mother hadn't noticed that her ribbon was missing. She hoped she would be able to find it the next time they went to the park, she had found a yucky bandage easily enough, finding her ribbon wouldn't be hard, right?

Elena got her ice cream and didn't have to eat the beans to get it, her mother knew she would feel better after getting a treat so she had let the beans issue slide. Elena got plenty of hugs and cuddles before being tucked into bed with an ice pack over her eye and she fell asleep without much trouble, her hurt feelings healed by motherly love and care.

The boy had hidden behind a tree until the mean girl and her mother had left and then he had gone back to the sandbox to try and find what remained of Spikey the spider. He knew he couldn't bring Spikey back to life, but he at least wanted to give him a decent funeral in his bug graveyard. He searched the sand, finding most of Spikey without much trouble. He spotted the girl's pink ribbon flag and he snatched it, feeling like he deserved the prize after she had been so mean to him. Why would she just squish his pet like that? It was so cruel! Spidey was a nice spider; he didn't bite like most of the other spiders he had owned over his short life. He had liked Spidey best for that reason; some of his other spiders had made him very sick by biting him and his father and mother had been very angry about it.

The boy ran home, holding his squashed spider and his trophy ribbon in his grubby little fists. He knew exactly what he was going to do with both. He tip-toed into the house and kept an eye out for his parents as he made his way to the backyard. His father was sleeping on the ratty couch in the living room, his large beer belly rising and falling with each snore-ridden breath. His mother was already in bed, her boney body barely big enough to fill half the bed. He walked past both of them and crept into the back yard, quickly digging a hole with his fingers and sliding Spidey into it. "Bye, Spidey, I'll miss ya buddy." He patted the dirt down and crept back inside, shutting the lopsided screen door behind him quietly before sneaking past his mother's room to the room he shared with his younger sister, Carmine.

Carmine was sleeping, her fine red hair curling around her thin cheeks as she shivered under a ragged blanket. She had once again left the better blanket for him. He hated when she did that; he wanted her to have it. She was the one who needed the warmth more. He gently woke her up, being careful to wipe his hands clean on his pants before petting her curly red hair with a whisper. "Hey, Carmine, I've got a present for you!"

Carmine opened her teal blue eyes, blinking sleepily at her older brother. "Brober? You back? Is late. Papa mad?" Carmine's speech was very good by the boy's standards. He knew he couldn't talk nearly as well when he was two. He didn't know how old he was now, but he knew how old Carmine was. He made sure to keep track of her birthday so he could make it special every year.

He shook his head. "Papa's sleepin', sissy."

"Oh." Carmine sat up, rubbing her eyes with tiny, bony hands. The boy hated how thin she was. Their father spent food money on beer and television, not them. The boy was the one who found food for his sister and himself. He knew that his mother would be able to fend for herself; he figured that since she got enough money doing icky things to ickier men to buy her the funny rocks she smoked, she had enough money for food.

"I brought you some stuff." He dug into his pockets and pulled out a piece of candy he had stolen from a younger boy on the playground and a cereal bar he had snatched from the purse of a woman who had a funny patch over her eye like a pirate. He had been on her blind side, so she hadn't noticed him. He had taken a few gil too and he had felt bad for it until he had seen that she was the mother of the mean nasty girl who had squashed his dear Spidey. He gave Carmine the candy and the cereal bar, opening bother for her so she could eat them.

Carmine smiled and broke the bar in half, giving him the other part. "Here, brober, you have some too."

The boy was about to say no, but his stomach rumbled and betrayed his hunger so he took the piece of cereal bar gratefully. "Thanks, sissy. I got us some money so I can buy us a real treat tomorrow." The boy knew where the Gil store was and it was the one store he never stole from. The Gil store was the best store in town; everything cost only one gil and it carried actual groceries inside. Many of the food was in broken boxes or past its expiration date, but the poverty stricken populace in the slums of Midgar didn't care. The boy had taken enough money, a whole five gil, to buy food that he could hide under his bed for them to snack on for a week or so. He would give most of it to Carmine, she was sick and needed the food more, but he would buy enough to have some for himself too.

Carmine smiled happily and munched her cereal bar slowly, savoring it. "Yay! Dank you, brober!"

The boy smiled and sat by her on the floor; there were no beds for either of them. "You're welcome, sissy. Did momma or papa hurt you today?"

Carmine shook her head. "No, but papa hurted momma. He punched her right on da nose an den took her to dere room an made those funny sounds again."

"Has she moved since?" The boy raised an eyebrow, wondering if his father had finally managed to kill his mother like he always promised her he would.

"No, she been sleepin. She breafin though, her back moves." Carmine finished her cereal bar and tried to break the piece of taffy her brother, who she only knew as brober, had given her in half. "Brober, will you breaks dis? I wanna share."

"Nah, you have it, Carmine. It'll hurt my teeth." The boy smiled, showing off his many cavities.

"Okay, brober. Dank you." Carmine popped the candy into her mouth and chewed carefully, cuddling against her brother's side.

The boy hugged her, wrapping the blanket around her shoulders. "Do you still feel sick?"

Carmine nodded weakly, still chewing her sticky candy. "Breafin hurts, brober."

He kissed her forehead and hugged her close. "It'll be okay. When we get some real food in ya you'll feel lots better. Promise." The boy made the mental decision to see if he could find some kind of medicine at the gil store.

"I know, brober." Carmine looked up at him, her teal eyes shining in the dark room. "Did you tink of a new name?"

The boy shrugged. "It wasn't important today. Oh, a girl squashed Spidey."

Carmine gasped in horror, tiny hands covering her mouth. "No! Not Spidey! He was fun!"

"Yeah, she squashed him on purpose too! I beat her up for it." The boy took the ribbon out of his pocket. "I brought her hair ribbon as a trophy for you. It's not as nice as Spidey was, but it's pretty." He dusted the extra sand off the ribbon and gently gathered up Carmine's hair, tying the thin red curls into a loose ponytail.

Carmine beamed and pet the ribbon in her hair. "Dank you, brober, is bootiful."

The boy smiled and held her, lying back on the floor and covering them up with their worn blankets. "Good night, Carmine."

"Good nai, brober." Carmine snuggled into his side, her breathing shallow and weak as she settled in to sleep.

The boy pet her hair until she fell asleep, unable to sleep himself. He wanted to make her feel better, but he had no way of doing so. He listened to her breathe, her inhales making a snotty whistle and her exhales sounding loud in the empty room. The noise was as comforting as it was upsetting; it let him know how sick she was and that she was still alive. He had seen other children in the slums get the same kind of sickness, the one where they coughed up snot and could hardly breathe, and the other children hadn't lived very long. He supposed he should've been worried about catching the sickness himself, but he was more worried about getting Carmine better. He went to sleep listening to the gentle 'hreeeenoooohreeenoooo', of her breathing, trying to figure out a name for himself. As his eyes drifted shut, the name popped into his head. What better name to give himself than the one his sister's breathing said while she slept? Heno. No, no that didn't fit. Reno? Yes, that was definitely better. Reno. He would tell her his new name in the morning when she woke.

* * *

Years later, when Elena had had more than enough time to forget about the incident, although she did squash spiders with an unnecessary violence without remembering why, Reno and Elena met again. Reno recognized the blonde rookie, her honey brown eyes unmistakable even though they had lost a lot of their innocent shine. Reno had thought that Gun, Elena's sister, had been the girl and had fought with himself for a good deal of time over whether or not he should give the ribbon back and make amends, but as soon as he spotted Elena in the training room with the other rookie Turks he knew that he had been mistaken. Her eyes were hard to forget.

Reno ignored his nagging conscience for a few months longer, letting Elena prove to him that she was a strong and relentless Turk and not the flimsy rookie he kept teasing her to be. After a while, however, he knew that the ribbon he had been saving for years needed to go back to its owner. He chose a day and waited, trying to script out how he would tell her that he had beaten the shit out of her when they were kids without sounding like a moron. He decided at the last minute to wing it and hope for the best, tucking the pale pink ribbon into his pocket to give to her later in the day.

Elena sat at her desk, filling out paperwork as if her life depended on it. There were times when her life DID depend on it, but none of the paperwork in front of her was that important. It was all duplicate and triplicate filing and really only needed initialing and signatures in all the blank spaces. If Elena could understand the jargon being used she'd likely try to read through what she was signing, but she had no idea what half of the multi-syllabic words meant.

A knock on her door made her look up from her tedious and mind numbing work. "Reno? What do you want?" Reno was probably one of her least favorite people. She wasn't sure why, but she just didn't like him. He was obnoxious and lewd, but Rude could be that way too and she was just fine with Rude and even laughed at his lewd and crude jokes. She never laughed at Reno's jokes.

"Good morning to you too, Laney." Reno rolled his eyes and stepped into her office, hands in his pockets. "I need to talk to you. Got a minute?"

"I'm trying to work." Elena sighed as Reno sat across from her in the creaky chair on the other side of her desk.

"It won't take long. Promise." Reno smiled, holding the thin ribbon in his pocket.

Elena sighed and set down her paperwork. "Fine. I'll bite. What do you need, Reno?"

"I don't need anything; I just have something to give you." Reno sincerely hoped that he wasn't making a fool of himself as he passed Elena the worn and dirty ribbon, a curly red hair still stuck in the faded pink fibers. "Remember this?"

Elena stared at the ribbon and took it from him, raising an eyebrow. "A ribbon?"

"A ribbon that a little boy took from you after he beat you up for squashing his spider." Reno sat back, his hands in his lap.

Elena blinked, vague memories of that long ago day muddling through her mind. "I…Don't really remember."

"Well, I do so…Sorry for beating you up when we were kids. Spidey was a good spider, but I probably over-reacted to you squishing him." Reno smiled sheepishly, twiddling his thumbs in his lap.

Elena blinked, the name of the spider jarring her memory. "Hey! I remember, the spider boy! That was you?"

"Yup." Reno nodded.

"Why did you take the ribbon?" Elena examined the fabric and plucked a little red hair out of it. "Ew, did you wear it?"

"No, my little sister did. I gave it to her as a present so she wouldn't be sad over Spidey dying." Reno took the hair from Elena's fingers.

"She has curly hair?" Elena raised an eyebrow, looking at Reno's stick straight hair curiously.

"Yeah, she had curly red hair, bright blue eyes, and the biggest smile you'd ever see." Reno smiled sadly and pocketed the hair.

"Wait, had?" Elena blinked, realizing the reason for the past tense. "She died?"

"She had pneumonia. Died about a year after I gave her the ribbon. Too much scarring in the lungs for her to ever breathe right or recover properly." Reno kept the sadness from his voice, but he couldn't keep it from his eyes and Elena saw it easily.

"I'm sorry, Reno." Elena held the ribbon in her hand. Gunner had given it to her, she remembered now, and the pink ribbon had been cut from one of the dresses Gunner wore to school. Elena had loved it when she was a girl because it was a present from her big sister, but that was before they had grown apart.

"It's no big deal. I've had time to get over it." Reno shrugged, standing up. "Anyways, that was all I wanted to say. Sorry for beating you up over nothing."

"Thank you. I'm sorry I squashed your bug. I know how much you like your bugs." Elena smiled and looked at the ribbon, wondering if Reno had any other memoirs of his sister.

"Well, I'd better get back to my bugs. I caught a caterpillar this morning. I've got him tucked up my sleeve." Reno smiled and pulled the sleeve of his shirt up, showing Elena the wriggling green caterpillar crawling up his arm.

"Awwww, he's so cute!" Elena smiled, holding the ribbon. She fought with her conscience, knowing she had plenty of things left from Gunner and that, had Reno not told her, the ribbon wouldn't have meant a thing to her. It clearly meant a lot to Reno, however.

"Yeah, he's awesome." Reno smiled and slid his sleeve back down. "I'm going to take him home with me."

Elena smiled and looked at the ribbon, passing it to Reno. "Here, you keep it."

Reno raised an eyebrow. "But it's yours."

"But it's more important to you. I didn't even remember it until you told me about it. I've got plenty of things to remind me of Gunner, but you don't sound like you've got a lot of things to remember your sister with." Elena pressed the ribbon into his hand, not taking no for an answer.

Reno smiled and pocketed the ribbon. "Thanks. Oh, don't touch the coffee. I put dehydrated chili peppers in the coffee grounds."

"Thanks for telling me. Why do you keep ruining the coffee?" Elena sat back down, looking at Reno curiously. On an almost daily basis Reno did something to the coffee. Sometimes he made the coffee better, sometimes he made it worse. It was hit and miss and the days where he did nothing to it at all were the days where everyone worried the most.

Reno shrugged. "It entertains me. I like to keep everyone on their toes."

Elena smiled as Reno left, looking back at her paperwork. Perhaps her judgment of Reno had been too premature. Perhaps it had been an unconscious effect of her remembering him as the boy who had beat her up. Either way, Elena vowed to try a little harder to get along with the pesky jerk. There was obviously more to him than she thought.

* * *

**Author's Note: This one took me a week or so to write. Spent a lot of time working on the ending. Oh, did any of my readers recognize the reference to my story Caterpillar? If you did, you win an imaginary cookie. If you didn't, well, you can have a cookie too but it won't have imaginary chocolate chips!**


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